Re: HOWTO filenames

[Bill Staehle <staehle@netvalue.net>]

Hi,

I'm the LDP user who had commented to Greg Ferguson which may have started
this particular round.

Jorge Godoy <godoy@conectiva.com> wrote:

>I suggest removing the words "HOWTO" and "mini-HOWTO" from
>filenames. They are already present at the directory / place they are
>stored at LDP.

That gets confusing _after_ I download them. Were they a HOWTO, or a mini?

(Yes, I try to download them to separate directories in ./new-HOWTO and
./new-mini until I read them, but does everyone do this?)

>I would suggest extending this rule to document titles, but in a
>reverse manner: add the word "HOWTO" (no minis) to document titles. It
>will help people who downloads them to know to what LDP category these
>documents belong to.

I'm not sure what this means. Is this the title within the document, as
opposed to the filename?

Certainly when I download documents (other than HOWTOs and minis which end
up in specific directories on my system), I always check to see that a
definitive name (usually a URL) is at the top or bottom of the document, so
when later referenced, I know where to check to see if the document is the
latest/greatest, and where to send others to find it.

David Lawyer <dave@lafn.org>   then replied:

>For the directories that contain them on PCs, shortening the names might
>permit more to display on the screen.  On my PC they all end with
>-HOWTO.txt.gz.  The gz is important to make it easy for the viewer (pager,
>editor, etc.) to know it needs decompression.

.gz, .Z, .zip, what ever - yes, but that is how the file is stored on the
system in question. I happen to gzip the HOWTOs, but not minis. This was how
they were delivered on the first distribution I used and I've just continued
that. But that is a personal option.

>txt is helpful too.

If that makes the viewer know how to decipher the file format? I dunno, I'm
not using DOS/Windows any more. But is the SGML format otherwise somehow
confusing to viewing tools? I'm dumb, and use 'less' to read most documents
in an XTerm.

>HOWTO is less important.  But some entries are long like:
>Unix-and-Internet-Fundamentals-HOWTO.txt.gz and not much would be
>saved by removing the HOWTO.

That's pushing it, but 'Unix-and-Internet-Fundamentals-HOWTO' is 37
characters, and allows /bin/ls to list it in two columns on an 80 character
wide display, while adding the .txt OR .gz extensions runs it over 39,
meaning /bin/ls gives me one file name per line. Of course, I _do_ get that
anyway if I pipe ls to more or less.

On the other hand, Midnight Commander (which I rarely use) defaults to
displaying one column listings on this box, with the file name shortened if
the display is not wide enough. Thus, I find 'Unix-and-~OWTO.gz'

           staehle@netvalue.net




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